What I'm Reading on Google Reader

Sunday, October 28, 2012

Colorful & Intricate Decorative Glass Panels for Game-Enthusiasts:
How would you like to have your favorite superhero look down at your from your room window or glass door? Okay, this may not be everyone’s dream, but for those of you nostalgic about Super Mario, Iron Man, Warhammer 40k or the shield of the Knights of Hyrul, these colorful stained glass panels could make for some alluring home additions. The original designs belong to artist R. Evan Daniels of Martian Glass Works and have the ability to completely transform the look and feel of any room.
All these complex projects are featured on Etsy, with prices ranging from $400 to $4500. The most expensive piece is the Iron Man 3, which the artist describes as follows: “This is possibly the most amazing and complicated piece I’ve ever made. The final dimensions for this piece are 31″x47″ There are a total of 334 Pieces of Glass and the window is 9.5 square feet. I used 275 feet of copper foil and 5 rolls of solder to complete this. Construction time is over 100 hours“. Impressive. But would you consider having it in your home?

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

You are looking at more than 84 million stars, the largest ever catalogue of the centre of our galaxy, the Milky Way. Astronomers at the Paranal Observatory in Cerro Paranal, Chile, stitched the 9 gigapixels of the original image from thousands of individual infrared pictures.You can see the full, zoomable version here. More »

[Josh] Booyah! I have a bunch of these from my CSA. Now I know what to do with 'em :)

The Fuss-Free Squash: Delicata Squash — Ingredient Spotlight: Love butternut squash but hate all the work it takes to peel, chop, and roast them? It's time to try delicata. These striped, mild-flavored squashes are far easier to slice, and get this: you don't even have to peel them. Is that a collective sigh of relief I hear? More

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Based on how many turbocharged boxer engines Subaru currently uses in its cars, solid news of a force-fed BRZ was only a matter of time. So it comes as little surprise that Automotive News is reporting that Subaru is currently developing a turbocharged version of the 2.0-liter engine currently found under the hood of the much-loved but somewhat underpowered 2013 BRZ.

AN's unnamed sources indicate that this engine will use a twin-scroll turbocharger and a new direct-injection system that will help give the engine an estimated 280 horsepower and torque that could be in excess of 250 pound-feet... still being sent to the rear wheels. The turbo'd BRZ will reportedly be making its debut for the 2014 model year, but it isn't clear if Subaru will simply call the car a BRZ Turbo or if it will finally deliver the BRZ STI that many enthusiasts have been clamoring for since the BRZ STI Concept hit the scene in 2011.

Samsung's ARM-running Chromebook is barely out of the starting gate, and it's already being tweaked to run without as much of an online dependency. By a Google employee, no less. Not content to rely solely on Chrome OS, Olof Johansson has loaded Ubuntu on the Chromebook by partitioning an SD card, mixing OS components and booting from USB. The technique unsurprisingly requires being more than a little comfortable with a Linux command line as well as playing fast and loose with the warranty. It also won't be cheap or quick -- commenters note that you'll ideally have a partitioning-friendly SD card, and running a desktop OS from a slower kind of flash storage creates an inherent bottleneck. Anyone who likes the Chromebook's $249 price, but isn't as enraptured with the cloud as most of the team in Mountain View, might still want to try Johansson's step-by-step process for themselves.
Filed under: Laptops, Software, Samsung, Google

Sunday, October 21, 2012

Remember all those movies and TV series in which a FBI agent turned a completely blurred photo into a focused image by clicking one button? Remember how you sneered? Well, soon you will not be able to laugh at it anymore. This app lets you deblur any heavily blurred image just like that. More »

Friday, October 19, 2012

Let's just say the Courb C-ZEN had a bit of a home-court advantage when Technologic Vehicles got to test drive the two-seat electric vehicle.

The French EV was put through its paces at the Paris Motor Show recently, and the little car was apparently impressive. Technologic Vehicles said the Courb was "very comfortable," had a "high-quality finish" and an "impressive" trunk that holds 400 liters (14.1 cubic feet).

The C-ZEN, which will also come in a pick-up version called the C-TOP, will start deliveries next year with a lease price of about 300 euros ($392 US at current exchange rates) per month and a purchase price of more than 25,000 euros ($32,690).

Google adds 25 million new building footprints to Maps:
When I opened Apple Maps in iOS 6 for the first time, I was struck by how basic the actual maps are. Zooming in shows the roads, and road names, but it’s all very simple. By contrast, when you zoom into Google Maps you often get to see the buildings on either side of the roads, which can help to get orientated and locate important landmarks.
Google today boosted this subtle but incredibly handy navigation feature by adding a further 25 million new algorithmically-created building footprints to the desktop and mobile versions of Maps.
The additional buildings appear in various major metropolitan regions of the United States, including Houston, Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, and the San Francisco Bay Area, and were generated using aerial imagery and computer vision techniques to automatically determine the shapes and heights of the buildings.
In the blog post announcing the new additions, Google states that this expansion is part of its "ongoing effort to provide you with maps that are as comprehensive as possible". Unlike, say, those provided by a certain rival company…

Thursday, October 18, 2012

For the second time in less than a week, a truck carrying thousands of pounds of cranberries cracked open on a Wisconsin highway. The spill covered half a mile. This cranberry menace is getting out of control. More »

Wednesday’s meeting of the Alcohol License Review Committee went faster than expected, with two potentially contentious items--a major expansion for T Sushi, and a revocation of license for Logan’s Madtown--deferred to later dates. At the same time, approval of a new coffee/wine/beer establishment under Metropolitan Place was lengthy and controversial, with a number of concerns raised about the completeness of the menu and ability of the establishment to function as a restaurant.

ExpansionsBrasserie V - 1923 Monroe

The Belgian-themed restaurant and bar received consent agenda approval to expand into the empty space next door at 1921 Monroe St., previously home of Premier Couture. Brasserie V owner Matthew Van Nest requested and received a capacity expansion from 46 to 99, allowing for a second bar and 43 seats in the new space, but no other aspects of the restaurant will change.

The Fountain - 122 State

The committee approved The Fountain’s requested expansion via consent agenda, paving the way for the restaurant to take over the interior hallway between its State Street frontage and the bakery next door. Restaurant capacity was not increased, and remains at 275 indoors and 36 outdoor.

T Sushi - 301 W. Johnson Street

T Sushi owner Teddy Stevens leases the entire building that houses upscale sushi restaurant T Sushi. At the ALRC meeting Wednesday, he said the first-floor restaurant’s popularity was leading to long waits for customers during the lunch and dinner rush, and as a result he was losing business and operating in the red. Saying expansion to the currently vacant second floor was the best solution, he requested permission to expand upward--approximately 2,500 square feet--and bump his capacity from 67 indoor/28 outdoor to a total of 300. He also wanted to add a bar to the upstairs level, and two additional sushi cases downstairs, with the idea that servers could bring orders upstairs by elevator.

Concerned already with the large capacity increase, the committee expressed additional concerns that Stevens had originally said he would not seek to operate on the second floor of the property. Saying the proposal had “the makings of something other than what you’re proposing,” committee member Thomas Landgraf asked Stevens if he would be willing to close the upstairs portion after 10 p.m., when overflow needs were presumably lower, to which Stevens agreed. The committee also questioned Stevens’ longterm goals, citing his previous entertainment license request (placed on file without prejudice) and capacity expansion request (granted for outdoor seating), both after he’d stated he’d seek neither.

The lengthy discussion concluded on a technicality: because Stevens had not included the required proposed floor plan for the new seating area, which Alcohol Policy Coordinator Mark Woulf said should have forestalled the application from even reaching the ALRC, the committee ultimately referred the T Sushi application to the November ALRC meeting.

New Licenses

Metropolitan Coffee and Wine - 329 W Mifflin St.

By far the longest conversation of the night centered on whether Yedong Tao would receive a beer and wine license for the establishment he was opening on the ground floor of Metropolitan Place. Saying he hoped to create a social space for the residents, and a lunch and coffee space for nearby workers, Tao came under scrutiny for a limited menu (18 food items compared to 21 alcoholic options) and a dearth of specifics about how he would realize his eventual goal of serving sandwiches and bakery products. Tao said that by opening early in the day and limiting the time of alcohol sales, he thought he could keep alcohol sales down to 40 percent of the total.

Metropolitan Place resident Robert Holloway registered concerns that the establishment’s intention to stay open past 10 p.m. on weekends could inadvertently turn it into more bar than restaurant--concerns that Madison Police Captain Carl Gloede echoed. “If I look at the picture in my mind, it looks like a bar,” he said. Ald. Mike Verveer, noting that the space has been empty since Metropolitan Place was constructed in 2006, said he thought the building’s condo association and abundance of vigilant neighbors would be adequate watchdogs of whether the establishment fulfilled its stated role of remaining largely a coffee- and wine-focused space.

Still, committee member Michael Donnelly moved against approving the license, saying it would be easier to wait to approve after Tao had been given time to refine his plans than to revoke the license later if the decision proved detrimental to the neighborhood. The license was ultimately approved 4-2, with committee member Ann Zanbie also voting against. The committee, however, placed several restrictions on the license that Verveer said Tao could apply for at later meetings, including limiting alcohol sales to before 10 p.m. every day of the week, and requiring him to submit his food/alcohol percentage breakdowns six months after opening.

A La Brasa - 15 N Broom
South American restaurant A La Brasa has been open exactly thirteen days, and according to owner Cynthia Gutierrez, business is going very well so far. On Wednesday, she appeared before the committee to request a liquor and beer license so she could add Mexican, Peruvian and Colombian wine, beer, and cocktails to the menu. Asked to limit her alcohol-serving hours to 10 p.m., she responded that many of her customers worked late and wanted to be able to eat dinner at a restaurant where they could also drink. Her license was approved on the condition that alcohol sales end at midnight.

Cheba Hut - 453 W Gilman
Richard Wooton, who plans to open a franchise of counter-culture-themed sandwich shop chain Cheba Hut, said having a beer license would help the establishment compete with delivery-oriented sub shops such as Milio’s and Jimmy John’s. He compared his shop to sit-down craft pizza restaurants such as Roman Candle and Pizza di Roma. Committee members briefly discussed whether Wooton’s seven-year-old marijuana possession conviction would legally bar them from approving his holding of such a license--city attorney Roger Allen said the interpretation was up to the committee--and unanimously approved the request on the condition that alcohol sales cease at midnight daily.

License RevocationLogan’s Madtown - 322 W Johnson
The city of Madison is seeking to revoke the license for Logan’s Madtown, claiming that the 395 indoor/100 outdoor capacity restaurant is behaving more like a bar than a restaurant. The restaurant was licensed in 2009 under the condition that it adhere to restaurant distribution of sales, with less than 50 percent of its sales from alcohol, but a city audit between May 2011 and May 2012 found the establishment consistently in violation, with 67 percent of sales coming from alcohol on average. Logan’s manager Adam Mais appeared Wednesday to say the establishment was seeking legal council in response to the revocation, but that he had no other response to the charges. The committee agreed to delay proceedings at least two weeks. Full disclosure: ALRC member Michael Donnelly sits on the Dane101 board of directors, and has contributed to Dane101 in the past.

Ubuntu 12.10 'Quantal Quetzal' released:
Ubuntu fans, be prepared to upgrade! Canonical, parent company of one of the most popular Linux distros available on Thursday released Ubuntu 12.10 "Quantal Quetzal" in desktop and server variants. It's labeled as a suitable alternative to Windows 8, coincidentally just before the October 26 launch of the latest consumer-oriented operating system from Microsoft.
On the desktop forefront, Ubuntu 12.10 "Quantal Quetzal" brings integration between cloud and desktop environments and integration with popular web-based applications, which Canonical claims is the next evolutionary step in the transition towards a cloud-based, multi-device world. The server variant includes the Folsom release of OpenStack, as well as deployment and management tools touted as a time-saving solution for developer teams that deploy distributed applications.Desktop
Canonical CEO Jane Silber described the latest version of the popular open-source operating system as: "the operating system for the multi-device era" and as an "easier, faster alternative to competing desktop operating systems."
Canonical also integrated its cloud service, Ubuntu One, into the latest version of its open-source operating system, and is also available as a native application for Android, iOS, MacOS X (in beta at the moment) and Windows. Users get 5GB of free storage, and with new APIs synchronization features can be implemented by developers into apps.
Searching files in Ubuntu 12.10 Dash now implies that users will get results from local storage as well as from online services from the likes of Google Drive. Dash also allows users to look for free and paid content from Amazon and Ubuntu One Music Store, but as some earlier reports have suggested, the former of the two has stirred some controversy with the inclusion of advertisements in Ubuntu.
Also to be expected is the Web Apps feature that is designed to make web-applications such as eBay, GMail, Facebook and Twitter available offline, without launching the browser, basically allowing said services to be used similar to desktop applications.
There is a new Previews feature that for instance allows to preview an album and receive a track listing with options to click through, download or purchase, as well as take a peek into Dash search results.
Aimed at businesses that want to offer virtualized desktop applications, users can now log into a Citrix, Microsoft or VMware desktop running on a virtualization server.Server
Cloud builders get access to technologies from both Ubuntu and OpenStack, the latter being featured through Ubuntu Cloud Infrastructure. The two new components, Cinder and Quantum, offer block storage and a virtual networking API, respectively.
For enterprises that want to keep using Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, Canonical mentions that compatible versions of the latest OpenStack release can be deployed directly from its Cloud Archive.
Intel's Open Attestation (OAT) in the OpenStack environment is supported, and Ubuntu Server 12.04 is labeled as the first of its kind to support it. For security purposes, a crypto key is used to authenticate cloud images, which should bring an extra layer of security to deployments in the cloud.
Ubuntu's service orchestration tool Juju, which has a new graphical interface designed with time-saving in mind, is natively supported on OpenStack clouds running Canonical's own server operating system.
Ubuntu Server 12.10 together with OpenStack is touted to give a faster cloud service deployment and better cost-efficiency. According to Silber, "Ubuntu Server is the reference operating system for OpenStack," and "the fastest and easiest way to take advantage of the latest open cloud technology."